The panel -- featuring my friend Deborah Siegel of She Writes, my hero Gloria Feldt and Courtney E. Martin (who wrote, among many, many other things, a book about girls with eating disorders that is sitting here on my desk) -- broached the topic of feminism and work/life balance. The women are different ages and at different places in their careers. Some have kids, some don't. All are writers. I was intellectually blissed out for two hours.

Gloria, who spent 30 years at Planned Parenthood and the last ten or so as CEO, said at one point she wasn't sure where the job ended and she began. I've never had that problem with corporate jobs, but writing and blogging, yes. If I create this blog and these books, how is it not me? How can one ever draw a line? Am I not furthering my very life goals when I foster this part of my personality, when I hit publish or seek an audience for my work? How do I separate the writer from the woman?

I tend to lack a governor. I would write myself into an early grave if it weren't for my family.

Balance, which I've written about before, is tough whether or not you live with other people. I don't think for one minute that single people don't have balance issues -- in fact, if I were living alone, I would actually have more balance issues than I do now, because I would have to depend on myself to tear me away from the blinking screen that is wrecking my back and straining my eyes and doing nothing at all for my spreading ass.

I tried to write this post all day yesterday, but the job was crazy and then I had to get my hair cut and then there was my girl, whom I hadn't seen at all on Tuesday because I went to the panel and got home after she went to sleep. So again, I didn't write. I helped her with her homework and made dinner and gave her a bath and read her stories. And by that time, it was 9:30, and though I often go back to work at that point, I looked at the husband I didn't see all weekend after traveling for work for three nights and sat down on the couch next to him instead. I've worked the last eleven days straight, and I don't do that well.

I am trying lately to avoid using myself up.

There was a time not that long ago that I was working until ten or eleven at least three nights a week. And then I was working on my novel on top of that. I always stopped to do the dinner/bath/bed part -- well, almost always -- but somewhere in there I realized I never just looked out the window and watched the grass blow.

"For a writer who's used to being in her own head, being around other people all the time can feel like a loss of self." -- Kristal Brent Zook

The people in my life are constantly amused and annoyed at my lack of focus when I'm working on a post or chapter in my head. I've received lots of well-meaning advice from friends and family suggesting that maybe I get out of my head a little. I've never heard anyone else voice my feelings on this matter, and Kristal nailed it. I only have one life, and people telling me to get out of my head feels like people telling me to stop being me, to cease to exist for a little while. When I did live alone, I spent hours doing things to jump-start my thoughts: going through old possessions, looking at photo albums, taking long walks, reading good books. I don't wish to return to living alone -- I can't bear to think of any life without my family -- but I do realize it's difficult to find that time to live in my head when I have to work during the day and am surrounded by people at night. To my immense relief, my husband encouraged me to write during the evenings a night or two a week when he saw my stress over not having an outlet for my overflowing thoughts. We try to spend a lot of time together at night -- it's important to us -- and it's an extreme act of love to give the object of your affection time and space to feed her soul.

Sometimes when I sit down to write, it feels more like draining a wound than anything else -- the thoughts are all stuffed in there, threatening to infect me if I don't release them immediately.

"Be intentional about your life and what you want to accomplish, but understand there's no choice you make that you can't change." -- Gloria Feldt

When I was around seventeen years old, I had endometriosis. When the doctor did a surgical laparoscopy to cauterize my bleeding (and consequently discovered that I was anorexic during surgery), I asked him to tie my tubes while he was at it. I was afraid if I ever had kids I wouldn't be a writer.

Ironic, isn't it, that my first book is about parenting?

Obviously, the doctor had some ethics and refused to do such a thing to a seventeen-year-old. Who knows how my life might have been different if he'd actually tied them?

That was me as a teenager, though. I thought I had to make every decision then and that all decisions were binding. I grew paralyzed at the time standing at the forks in the road of my life. The older I get, the less seriously I take my decisions. Gloria's right -- there's very little you can't come back from, really. Make a bad decision with your career or financially or where to live and it'll be painful for a while, but eventually time passes and look! There you still are, still alive.

After the talk, I went over to say hello to Gloria, who spoke at BlogHer '10, and mentioned I sure wish I'd had Gloria Feldt to talk to when I was 15.

"I know," she said. "I wish I had Gloria Feldt when I was 15."

And therein lies the rub. We have to grow into our power. And we can't do that if we're so exhausted from balancing jobs and family that we have no time left for what's in our heads.

*Correction -- It was Gloria Feldt, not Kristal Brent Zook ... I apologize for the mistake!

September 27, 2010

This past weekend at Type A Mom, Katherine Stone of Post Partum Progress asked what to do if she pointed out an injustice or a mistake (in her case, it was an inaccurate article on AOL about postpartum depression) and though the situation was rectified to her satisfaction (article removed, apology issued), commenters and other bloggers went out for blood against the writer?

What happens when you lose control of the opposition you created? Are you responsible?

The conversation continued, with other examples offered up of a reporter's personal e-mail being tweeted and hate campaigns unleashed (anyone remember #nikonhatesbabies?), and finally someone asked, "Do we really have to go so far as to say 'Don't attack this person as a human being?'"

And it turns out that we do.

Entire sites have been devoted to denigrating bloggers' writing skills, their mothering skills or even their children. Those people -- the children attackers, at least -- are in the very small but vocal minority. However, once you've seen someone attack a child because she is mad at the mother, you can't unsee it. You can't unsee ugly Photoshopped pictures of a child, nor can you unread hateful things said about that child and therefore stored somewhere forever in the annals of the Internet. I can't believe we have to say it is not okay to attack someone's child under any circumstances. But it seems we do.

Attacks on writers are sometimes genuine compassion for the victim that just gets out of hand. Sometimes, in an effort to support one of our own, this community falls like a ravenous mob on a writer who has just made a mistake. Even an egregious mistake is still a mistake, especially if the writer acknowledges it as such.

And, you know, let she who is without mistakes throw the first stone.

I left the session thinking no, of course,we shouldn't have to remind people not to invade someone's privacy or loudly proclaim their ineptitude or dive-bomb their blog or what have you, but it might not be a bad idea to tag that reminder onto any post criticizing an article, a campaign or an idea. Just as I'm not calling for the head of the marketing guru who coined the term "corn sugar," most bloggers up in arms over an inaccurate post or a misquoted entry or even a bit of plagiarism are mad, but within reason. No lives need be lost over the Internet.

We must (and I fully count myself in that "we"), when we rush to support a friend, check our anger at the door and think hard about the best way -- the most productive way -- to get that message heard. We must rise above the hashtag. We must remember that for every post out there, there's a human being behind the keyboard.

September 24, 2010

I called home last night after the little angel went to bed. Beloved told me she cried for about five minutes after bedtime. "I just want my mommy," she said.

My heart cracked a little.

But for the first time in my motherhood career, I didn't feel guilty at being away. It can't be helped, it's for work, and she understands my work and what is good and bad about it. I just felt sad, picturing my little girl crying for me.